Cool Hunting
Three young designers from Germany, taking issue with Ikea's rather bland Billy shelving units, reinvented the furniture in a series of designs that repurpose the unit. Called Pimp my Billy, the collection of design interventions cheers up a cheap bookcase to no end!
Billy Wilder takes the form of green branch growing across the Billy Bookshelf (above right). Billy Heidenreich is a shelf with a lectern attached for displaying your most beautiful photography books (below left), while the Stütze functions as an extra leg to tilt the bookcase at an angle so there's no need for book ends (below right). All the designs are beautifully made and will probably last longer than your Ikea shelving unit.
Carsten Schelling, Ralf Webermann and Sven Rudolph, all graduates of FH Hanover University of Applied Sciences and Arts, make up the design collective that is Ding 3000. Check out the rest of their sleek, but entertaining furniture and product design on their site.
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Ikea has been making over parts of NYC in celebration of their Everyday Fabulous Exhibit (which ended today). Their stylists took on parks, turned hot dog stands into outdoor cafés, bustops into living rooms and strung up hammocks on street corners, bringing smiles to jaded New Yorkers and ICFF visitors, and looks of bewilderment on tourists. Cheeky and clever....
Office chair design seems to lag about 50 light-years behind everything else. Somehow form rarely balances function and most seating options succumb to the same set of boring standards. Leave it to Ikea to make something as democratic as the office chair a little bit fun and edgy. While their Svenning chair isn't revolutionizing the traditional shape of work perches (nor is it necessarily...
The most talked about exhibition during the Salone del Mobile was that by Maarten Baas. Set within the chaotic mess of a working auto garage in the Zona Tortona, the show covered works to date, along with a preview of new collections for Contrasts Gallery and Established & Sons Limited. The choice of space initially felt to me like a commentary on the hyper-produced...
While the Italians were rightfully celebrating their design legacy at the Triennale with an exhibition called "What is Italian Design?," I find it worth noting that once again, Dutch design was proving to be the most radical, poetic, soul-searching work at the Salone del Mobile. On the last day of the fair, I doubled back to the Zona Tortona to see “reCollections,” an exhibition...
Just steps from the infamous 10 Corso Como, the Japanese brand E&Y mounted a modest show at Galleria Antonia Jannone under the name "Greenland." The title was supposed to reference both global warming and the changing nature of the namesake country. I didn't quite get the connection between their products and sustainability, especially considering the wanton (albeit well-designed) use of paper and cardboard in...
Yesterday at the Fiera Milano, walking through the sprawling campus of the supergroup Poltrona Frau, I ran into the New York designer Stephen Burks, who took a moment to chat with me about his new line of eco-conscious ware for Italian manufacturer Cappellini. Called Cappellini Love, the collection is comprised of a series of vases and bowls made from glass fragments, and a small...
The Pharos Project
Hank and Matlok
Neon Shoes
Radio Village Nomade
Ghostly Swim: Interview with Sam Valenti
Creative Index
Interview with Maarten Baas
A Paper Tiger
Von Totebags and T-Shirts
